Judging and workouts

[Snowflake]

Basically the reason for this thread is that workouts became very much the only reason a horse could do well before. I want to change that. I don't have time to do the workouts for one, and secondly, I think that was making it difficult for us to get new members and keep them!

My idea is that we stop judging workouts in the everyday races, and just use them for them really big ones. the Horse of the Year Selection races. The ones with the asterisk*.

Instead of workouts in every race, we could instead submit a short paragraph on the horse's race strategy. We could even bring in a bit of randomization to incorporate good days and bad days and luck. Maybe randomize a number between one and one hundred. 1-25 is a bad day. 25-75 is a normal day. 75 to 100 is a really good day.

Another idea i've brought up a few times would be to add stats to our horses.. here's an example i did a little while ago when I was thinking about starting GHF again.

Stat	Rating	What it means
Temperament	-/10	Horses with a bad temper have a lower rating, meaning they won't do as well as horses with a good temper. Temper can get better over time with more maturity.
Maturity	-/10	Physical maturity. Typically a horse won't reach full maturity until about five years of age.
Heart	-/10	The horse's will to win.
Response	-/10	The horse's willingness to cooperate with it's jockey and response to the jockey's commands.
Consistency	-/10	Horses have good days and bad days. Some have more good than bad and some may never have a bad day.
Health	-/10	The horse's ability to recover from fatigue and injury.
Staying Power	-/10	The horse's ability to uphold a fast pace.
Speed	-/10	The horse's speed
Stamina	-/10	The horse's stamina
Training	-/10	The horse's level and degree of training. A horse may be fully trained by the age of 4

Total: -/100

They could at first be randomized, then bred into the foals.

Your ideas?

[Kirsten Jade]

<sub>I'm not a fan of the stats idea. Because it would be hard to keep up and for new members to do good and plus everyone will want 100% and for the people like me who like a bit of difficult horses and will be honest then is faulted because their stats are lower.

i dunno...

i like making workouts but don't always have time. Workouts should be fun... not a chore. But I like to see my horses improve because of workouts...

I like the idea of submitting a short paragraph of our strategy for the race because then you get to see what other people think of your horse and whether it's considered a threat or not and for the randomization for good and bad days it DOES make it more realistic... Underdogs and long shots win all the time...</sub>

[morgan]

I kinda like the idea of doing workouts still, they can be a bit tedious though, and I don't always have time for them, but I enjoy writing them. I love the stats idea! I think that can make it more fun and a bit easier to judge as well.

[Snowflake]

A horse a bad temper isn't necessarily going to do any worse than a horse with good temper. The stats would be a part of judging, not the whole lot of it. It's like an extra to personality and our racing stats that we already have.

Say a horse had stats that amounted to 70 points. He has a good temper, but isn't so consistent and doesn't always put in the effort required to win. Another horse, with a terrible temper but good consistency and heart to win with the same amount of stat points is entered in the same race. Both horses fit the race requirements and distance/surface the same. who do you think would come out on top? (though of course other stuff is going to come into play, like race records..)

For me, the bad tempered horse would probably come out on top because he has better consistency and really wants to win. If we include the race strategy paragraph, and the randomized good/normal/bad day and luck, it should be interesting.. I might make up a race and some horses and use that as an example..

[sam]

I don't like the temper idea either. I mean, in real life it doesn't matter how nasty they are. Just if they run and if they WANT to run.

Like Man O' War. He was very well known for being the rankest stallion when it came to ground manners but he still kicked butt in racing.

And if we do end up keeping it- that should definitely not be randomized. I don't want to breed my two sweet horses and somehow get the devil

I want to keep work outs in. I agree that everyday race workouts aren't needed- I just did them if someone else did if my horse needed a bit more of an edge
But I don't want to do workouts JUST for the big races and never more than that.

I agree with the good day, bad day thing and the paragraph about your horse's strategy too

I don't really like the stats idea cause then you can compare and know which horse is the better and has a good chance of winning, even with the whole luck thing thrown in. I feel like it's just a bunch of numbers and not a horse (Though I know it is just number lol)

I would love if we could make it mandatory to give feed back- especially for those in 4th and lower but DEFINITELY for bigger races!

Maybe also add in weather and track conditions?
For the past few Kentucky Derbies, long shots won because of the slushy track then lost easily in the Preakness due to do the dry track

[Snowflake]

And if we do end up keeping it- that should definitely not be randomized. I don't want to breed my two sweet horses and somehow get the devil

I said stats would be bred into foals lol, they would inherit traits from their parents

Maybe ditch temper, since personality pretty much covers it anyway, and add 'affected by weather conditions' to stats instead? abbreviated to weather. So 10/10 would be completely unaffected, 7/10 slightly affected, 5/10 quite affected, 2/10 very affected etc.

In reality, a workout before a race won't magically make the horse better than the others.. I really can't continue with doing workouts so often, i just won't have the time.. I'd have to cut my string down to about five horses

mandatory feedback would never work.. too much work for whoever's judging. you can always ask for feedback in the thread or pm.

[S u N f r O s t ~]

Hmmm. I believe that having these stats to work off of would be helpful in some ways, but detrimental in others. It would provide a little extra for judges to work off of, but it shouldn't encompass the horse's talent. I think we should make it so that these "stats" simply affect some side-aspects of its racing. I believe we should have stats for things like maturity, health, consistency and training, because those are things we can't really control in horses, real life or fake. However, things like speed and staying power seem too set in stone, while temperament, response and heart are things the owner will include in the horse's personality, and therefore unnecessary.

It seemed to me that a lot of people joined the site so that they could rp workouts with their horses, and for the unrandomized judging style. Because that was a unique aspect, people were definitely attracted. I think that we should continue with workouts and our unrandomized judging as we always have, but only let "certified judges" judge. Maybe we could have something like a judging test, where the prospective judge judges a field and gives feedback for why he or she placed horses where she did. If we like what the judge did, we make them a "certified judge" and add their name to the roster. Maybe we could even make a member group out of the certified judges. The requirements for being a certified judge could be being very active (this was they're around to judge races) and having been a member for at least one month.

When a race fills up, we could simply go through the certified judges roster and pm a person who isn't entered in the race, asking them to judge. This would be so much more organized than what we used to do, fishing around for members who might know how to judge. Plus, we know that the certified judge actually knows how to judge a field reasonably.

I like the idea of randomizing the bad and good days. That would definitely make things more interesting ^__^

I definitely think we should have weather and track conditions. Track conditions, I think, are measured by number in real life. Maybe the judge could randomize a number (I think they go 1-5) that determines the track conditions for the day, with 1 being fast, 3 being slushy and 5 being nearly non-rideable mud. Then we would look at the horse's weather condition stat, and compare it with the good luck, bad luck as well as what we think to judge.

[Snowflake]

Hmmm. I believe that having these stats to work off of would be helpful in some ways, but detrimental in others. It would provide a little extra for judges to work off of, but it shouldn't encompass the horse's talent. I think we should make it so that these "stats" simply affect some side-aspects of its racing. I believe we should have stats for things like maturity, health, consistency and training, because those are things we can't really control in horses, real life or fake. However, things like speed and staying power seem too set in stone, while temperament, response and heart are things the owner will include in the horse's personality, and therefore unnecessary.

Good point, I agree.

It seemed to me that a lot of people joined the site so that they could rp workouts with their horses, and for the unrandomized judging style. Because that was a unique aspect, people were definitely attracted. I think that we should continue with workouts and our unrandomized judging as we always have, but only let "certified judges" judge. Maybe we could have something like a judging test, where the prospective judge judges a field and gives feedback for why he or she placed horses where she did. If we like what the judge did, we make them a "certified judge" and add their name to the roster. Maybe we could even make a member group out of the certified judges. The requirements for being a certified judge could be being very active (this was they're around to judge races) and having been a member for at least one month.

When a race fills up, we could simply go through the certified judges roster and pm a person who isn't entered in the race, asking them to judge. This would be so much more organized than what we used to do, fishing around for members who might know how to judge. Plus, we know that the certified judge actually knows how to judge a field reasonably.

I don't think this would really be necessary. I'd rather just have people volunteer to judge. Don't know whether you've seen or not, but I decided to change the way we post and enter races. (check y10 calendar for new way, the new races i've posted was just me being lazy)

I definitely think we should have weather and track conditions. Track conditions, I think, are measured by number in real life. Maybe the judge could randomize a number (I think they go 1-5) that determines the track conditions for the day, with 1 being fast, 3 being slushy and 5 being nearly non-rideable mud. Then we would look at the horse's weather condition stat, and compare it with the good luck, bad luck as well as what we think to judge.

yes. i like

[S u N f r O s t ~]

I saw the new way actually, and liked it immediately xD It would be a lot more organized.